Thanatopsis
by EsotericCrimson
Summary: Taking a life is never easy. It’s unbearable when it’s the life of the one you love. Slash.
1. Part I: Suffer

**Title:** Thanatopsis 

**Author:** EsotericCrimson

**Rating:** PG-13

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Unfortunately.

**Summary:** Taking a life is never easy. It's unbearable when it's the life of the one you love. Slash.

**A/N:** This just sort of… happened. I wrote it entirely this afternoon/evening – it was something that just came to me, and I felt compelled to write. It blossomed from an idea that I had been mulling over for some time, but never figured I'd actually sit down and write out; yet today brought both opportunity and drive, and here it is. Two parts, this being the first; from Obi-Wan's point of view. The second part is from Anakin's. Please review :D

-Esoteric Crimson

* * *

**Part I: Suffer**

"And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, _A Psalm of Life_

* * *

Were it not for you, I would never have known true agony.

I watch you, beautiful even in anger; even in hate. I never denied the darkness in you, yet I never attempted to eradicate it. It intrigued me, it aroused me. I found it to be exquisite, not because darkness itself is appealing, but because it was a part of you.

You pace backwards, forwards, backwards again – eyes searching in vain for an answer in the rising smoke that permeates the air; in the stars above that you cannot discern, yet you know from instinct are watching you from afar. Even their omnipotent gaze does not phase you in your rage.

I approach you; I beg you without words to accept the advance for what it is; a plea for you to return to me, the most frantic desire of my broken heart; the only request of a desperate man: for my Anakin to return to me.

I want to hold you, to feel you pressed against me, if only one more time; if only for an instant. Yet I know you too well. You are blinded by your wrath – it consumes you. I cannot speak to the lover within you, I am unable to touch the radiant soul beneath the pool of loathing – you are drowning, Anakin. The only thing I can do is to take your hand and resurface with you at my side.

I plunge headlong into the darkness, intent upon saving you from yourself.

I fight you; only halfheartedly. I block, I parry – I move in a distinctly defensive manner. I fight the urge to run towards you. I want to touch you, to embrace you; to whisper softly in your ear as I clutch you to me, and assure you that you are not alone, and that whatever it is you have done, whatever it is that you considered doing, and whatever lead you to those actions and those thoughts, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters, Anakin. Nothing but you, and the fact that no matter what, I still love you. I will always love you.

I try to reason with you. I do my best to force you to see that what you are doing only causes more pain. I cannot bear to see you in pain, Anakin – I never have been able to. Not when it is in my power to prevent it.

I leap, praying that now, you will see that this path leads to naught. It is not too late. Give up this power struggle, this madness. Return to the Light – return to me. Was what we shared not enough? How could you ask for anything more? I would have given you the galaxy – the universe – if you had but asked.

I swing, and my heart shudders in my chest as I realize what I have done. I realize that I am the cause for your suffering now – the torment I seem to have inflicted emotionally upon you for so many years manifests itself ruthlessly in a physical form as your limbs tumble to the ground, detached from your body.

Your voice is rough and hateful as the scathing words escape your lips. No… you don't mean them… you _can't_ mean them…

I am finding it increasingly difficult to breathe.

I gasp, and as the flames envelop your body, they in turn engulf my own being, burning from the inside, outward. Here, the scars shall never reveal themselves, and the wounds shall never heal. Solace is meaningless, and peace shall forever remain elusive from this moment on.

You writhe, I tremble. You scream, I whimper. With every passing moment, I wish to run towards you, to relieve you from this misery. And yet, I am unable to move – guilt and fear have mingled with remorse and a sense of loss deeper than has ever been known, and they have solidified to cement my feet to the torrid stone beneath them. I cannot approach you. I cannot think. I cannot move. I cannot speak. I cannot eradicate your words from my mind, where they will haunt me for a lifetime, and perhaps beyond.

You hate me. I hate me. How inappropriately ironic.

I cannot live without you, Anakin. Life without you cannot be deemed a life at all. Yet, I think it a cruelty far easier to endure than the cold accusation of your words; the loveless eyes you use to glare at me; eyes that are no longer your own. And it is then that I realize:

Anakin Skywalker is truly dead.

I mourn. Oh, my love, how I mourn.

Yet it was I who truly perished on that fiery rock; it was my soul scorched in the river of flame that flowed through the chasm before us – that flowed through your veins, and thus flowed in mine.

Don't you see? I surrendered myself to you entirely; when your heart died, mine was shattered forever.

My eyes darken strangely, and I know that whatever good remains within me will be forfeited on this very spot, and shall remain here, on this forsaken planet, never to be retrieved again.

Obi-Wan Kenobi died beside his beloved as they both slipped into darkness. I joined you on the riverbank, never feeling the heat from the lava flow. I turn towards you, but you do not respond to my presence. Tears run down my face in countless rivulets, unchecked, and unnoticed. They mean everything, and nothing.

Forgive me, my Anakin. Forgive me.

I sigh in relief as I fade away, and caress your marred face with a tenderness I'd never employed before in touching you. We will become one with the Force, my love – together.

My soulless body turned back once more, walking dejectedly away; driven, as always, by an unfading sense of duty. Yet we both know it is useless. I will not die here, and I will not live on.

I will exist. Hollow, unfeeling, until my stubborn physical shell succumbs to the same doom suffered by the spirit it once housed. A spirit once bright and full of vigor, now black and wreathed in shadow.

Spare me this torture, Anakin – I beg of you. If ever you loved me, please… spare me.

Then again, it is no more than I deserve.

I suffer.


	2. Part II: Nothing

**Title:** Thanatopsis 

**Author:** EsotericCrimson

**Rating:** PG-13

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Unfortunately.

**Summary:** Taking a life is never easy. It's unbearable when it's the life of the one you love. Slash.

* * *

**Part II: Nothing**

"Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell."

Emily Dickinson, _My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close_

* * *

You're not really gone. You can't be. You've never truly been gone before. You were always there, in the back of my mind. Or in the front of it. Or everywhere, in everything. You were always everything.

But this time – this time it's different. I can sense it; feel it coursing through me like a nightmare, playing over and over again in my head, never ceasing, killing me slowly. And I know the truth, though I cannot bring myself to acknowledge it. I cannot believe it, I _will_ not. Yet somewhere, in some traitorous corner of my consciousness, I cannot deny the horrific, crushing fact that this time… this time…

You really are gone.

The blow hits me violently, like a lightsaber wound to the heart. I stagger, my arms flying out to steady myself against the closest secure object – a wall. I lean on it with complete dependence, knowing perfectly well that my strength has all but abandoned me. I don't have the will to support myself – I don't have the heart to stand and move on.

I haven't had the heart to do anything for years.

I've tried to forget about you. So many times I tried to imagine your heroic, though crushing, demise in the Clone Wars – a quick, painless death that wrenched you from me, and left me broken-hearted. I attempted to wish you away entirely, though that was even more difficult. Sometimes I would even venture as far back as the very beginning, where you would die instead of your Master at the hands of that crimson and sable demon. I concocted such elaborate lies for myself – alternate universes that were often more terrible than reality, for their lack of you, but necessary all the same, for that exact reason. Yet there you were, always in my thoughts, images of you floating through my mind at both the most inopportune moments and at the most welcome of instances.

At first, I would curse you, damn you, and wish you dead when these memories flitted across my mind. Yet it did not take long for me to accept that they did not bring me pain, or anger. Eventually, I began to revel in the comfort they lavished upon me; in all these years, it was your face that served as the only balm that soothed my aching soul. At those points, I tried my best to forget all of the spite and violence, and the wrongs that marred our departure from one another – all of my grave and selfish mistakes. I became quite adept at it, dampening the desperate screams of my innocent victims to a soft, grievous hum at the edge of my awareness. I could ignore them, even if I soon discovered that I could never forget. And in time, at every little thing that even slightly brought you to mind, I started to feel a strange and subtle warmth in my chest, a foreign dampness behind my eyes, and a constriction of my throat. Sometimes I would smile; other times, a wrenching sob would escape me before the episode passed. I knew then that not only could I never erase you from my memory, from my life; but also neither could I erase you from my heart. Nor did I ever wish to.

Sith, I _had_ a heart. I had forgotten, or perhaps simply doubted, that fact for so long. But it was true, and I rejoiced. It was true because of you.

I reluctantly study the mound of Jedi garments heaped in front of me, without you wrapped safely within them. This is it, then – this is the end. There is no coming back – not like those many times I spent so long ago, starring out a large, paned window at the Coruscanti skyline, waiting with a stubborn faith for you to return from presumed death yet again. You will not fly back to me in a stolen speeder, bearing physical marks of your trials, though none too worse for wear, considering. You will not grin at me adoringly as you explain the ordeal briefly, and without pomp and circumstance, to the Council members present for your amazing return, as I look upon you in awe, letting slip that eternally held breath that awaited your return, calming my pulse to a normal pace as my heart released the tension and fear that had fueled it for days. You will not come to me, once duty has been properly fulfilled, with the love I feel for you mirrored in your eyes, and we will not embrace fiercely, nor will we lock lips passionately as my tears stream into the union of our mouths, and I choke out the worry and the panic whose aftershocks are still wracking my being. I will not tremble in your arms, and you will not console me with your words or your hands. We will not cross to one of our respective sleep chambers, and you will not whisk away every bit of the terror that consumed me in your absence with your skin upon mine, as we create something beautiful with nothing but our bodies and our love. We will not wake up in each other's arms, and I will not feel your every breath as my head rests against your chest. For so long, I have missed it – and harbored some irrational hope that someday, it could be once more. But never again…

What have I done?

Force, it hurts. Blinding pain… hurts…

And then there is nothing.

Once again, I am the lost and frightened little boy who cannot live without his Master. I am the slave from Tatooine, unfit to be anything more. I am desperate, I am alone. The love that still burned so fiercely within me dies instantly, embers fading to ashes, which only become one with the wind – harmless, and forgotten.

How untrue. They are neither harmless, nor forgotten.

I bend to touch the robes strewn upon the metallic floor, fingering them reverently with my ebony glove, imagining that the fabric was your skin, and my hand was of flesh, and that we were back in the Temple so many years ago. With little effort, I can believe that the echoing footfalls from the bridge are the sacred breaths issuing from your full, swollen lips – heavy, rapid, and uneven. I can pretend that the deep eruptions of the complicated machinery below are both our moans of ecstasy; I can hear my name from deep within your throat, the sound of which is more erotic than any physical act. That name from your mouth, spoken in your beautiful voice, was sheer beauty. It frightened me almost as much as it thrilled me then – now, it will destroy me.

It is over now. There is nothing.

Without you, Obi-Wan, I have nothing. I _am_ nothing.

* * *

**A/N:** I have a third part to this; a sort of… happy ending. Yet I am very hesitant to post it – this is rather angsty, and I'm not sure whether it would be appropriate to deviate from that. So, if you want closure, or if you think I should leave this as it stands, let me know. I thrive upon your feedback. Thanks :D

-EsotericCrimson


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